Madison Country Day School is considering the addition of 10 new classes over the next few years for its International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme as high school enrollment climbs. Additional DP offerings may include in-person classes in psychology, economics and theatre.
In early October, MCDS sent a survey to parents listing the 10 DP classes under consideration. The school sent the survey to families of students who will be going into the DP program in the coming years and included students currently in seventh through 10th grades. The potential new classes include: literature, literature and performance, French, German, business management, economics, philosophy, psychology, computer science, and theatre. These classes were chosen using six grouped subject areas: group one is language and literature; group two is language acquisition; group three is individuals and societies; group four is sciences; group five is maths and group six is arts. The hope is that parents discuss interest in these classes with their children to discover which would be the most popular. MCDS will only add the classes with the most interest.
Why is MCDS just beginning to consider additional classes now? Our community is growing. This year, MCDS is graduating 25 students. The school is expecting the number of high school students to increase within the next few years, and the school needs to add more classes to account for this.
“With more students, they’re going to need more options, mainly because I think students should have more choices to take classes in person instead of taking classes online,” said Brian Salzer, head of the high school. Currently, students are using Pamoja, an IB-approved online course provider, to take online classes that MCDS does not offer in person. “Our enrollment is increasing in the high school and we want our offerings to grow with the numbers of students,” said Salzer. We are a small school, so the school can’t offer everything to everyone, but MCDS can add more classes as the high school expands.
As the high school expands with students and class offerings, it will need more teachers. IB and DP Coordinator Mark Childs said, “If we add another 30 to 40 students to the high school, you actually have to get more teachers to teach them. [And] because now you have more tuition so you have more money to pay for more teachers.”
Childs added that the school would have wanted to offer some more courses in recent history, but the size of the student body didn’t justify it. Now it does.
“We think we can offer a few more courses because we’ll have the money to hire the teachers,” Childs said.
Once the school has enough information from the survey, Childs and other school leaders will talk to students about the classes and explain the program. “The second step, after we eliminate a few that there seems to be no interest in, then we will talk with students to try to educate you on what the courses are,” Childs said.
He described how some choices might affect others using theater and music as examples. Students aren’t able to choose both of those classes in the IB diploma program. “You have to choose between visual arts, music or theater,” Childs said.
The decisions on new class selection are about more than who wants to add theater. “School leaders will solicit student opinions, because it’s not always obvious to everybody,” said Childs. For example, business management, economics, philosophy, psychology and history are all grouped by the IB Program under the heading of “Individuals and Societies.” Students may only choose only one of these five new classes because they are all in the same group.
“MCDS offers you options, but you have to make a decision,” Childs said. “That’s going to be the hard part.”
The school is still deciding when the classes will be added to the program. “Perhaps next year, perhaps the year after,” Childs said. As the IB Coordinator, Childs said he thinks in terms of groups, not individual classes. The school might add one course per group each year or so over the coming years. “So it might actually be staggered,” Childs said.
If he were choosing based on his personal interests, Childs would add a philosophy class. “I studied philosophy in college, so I really like this philosophy, but I don’t think that’s going to be a popular choice.”
Updates will come when the school releases more information about this process. Students said they can’t wait to see how the community and academics expand.
